


since i met you, i think that’s begun to change

by ohvictor



Category: A3! (Video Game)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Cuddling, Depression, Established Relationship, M/M, canon typical kniroun, canon-compliant loft beds this time!, pre-rookies, video games - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-05
Updated: 2019-07-05
Packaged: 2020-06-09 20:03:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19483015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohvictor/pseuds/ohvictor
Summary: Itaru had a long, rough day at work. He unwinds in various ways.





	since i met you, i think that’s begun to change

**Author's Note:**

> it feels wrong to be initiating the itacito tag when i only got into itacito for [emil](http://archiveofourown.org/users/asterions), but since the fic is FOR emil... it's still his influence, for sure. i started writing this fic to get emil thru exams and then did not finish it until like 2 weeks later, lol. 
> 
> i would advise readers that this fic has themes of depression/anxiety, and altho it's mostly intended to be cathartic/relatable, it is still something to be careful about. 
> 
> the title is from [itaru's solo](https://yaycupcake.com/a3/index.php?title=Gamer%27s_High). thank you to goomba server for everything! o7
> 
> eta: this takes place after part 1 of the main story, but before part 2! (i.e., after act 4, before act 5) however, it does contain content spoilers from a post-part 2 event (knights of round IV the stage).

There’s a knock on Itaru’s bedroom door, loud enough that Itaru hears it clearly over the audio playing from his DS’s speaker. 

Idly, he turns the volume down a few notches and contemplates his course of action. From his current position, barricaded up in his loft without any pants on, there’s no way he’s going down to answer the door himself. The door _is_ unlocked, though, so there’s nothing he can do to stop whoever it is from bursting in, as he’s noticed Mankai Company members enjoy doing, especially the busybodies from his troupe. 

Well, he is an actor now, he supposes. Actors can be loud if they have to. 

Summoning up all five minutes of Tasuku’s lecture on voice projecting that he remembers, Itaru calls, “Who is it.”

There’s a familiar laugh from the other side of the door. “It’s me, of course!”

Oh. Itaru should have expected Citron. 

“Okay,” he answers, laying back against his pillows and setting his DS down on his belly. This is a respectable position to receive guests in, right. 

The doorknob turns and Citron lets himself in, eyes scanning the room and finding Itaru up in his bed. Citron’s mouth turns up at the corners like a cat that’s found its prey. “Can I john you up there?”

“Join,” Itaru corrects, monotone. “Sure.”

Citron claps his hands together and nudges the door closed behind himself. He approaches the ladder to Itaru’s loft bed, toes off his slippers, and climbs the ladder nimbly, even clambering over the pillow Itaru’s stacked in front of the ladder top to give himself a safe, enclosed feeling. 

Now, of course, his security’s been compromised, but this specific intruder isn’t... _wholly_ unwelcome. 

Citron wastes no time in crawling across the bed and cuddling up to Itaru’s side, nuzzling his face into the crook of Itaru’s neck. Itaru doesn’t move very much in return, but he lifts his chin to give Citron more room to worm his way in, and after a moment, he reminds himself to relax his muscles, and ends up fairly boneless in Citron’s arms. 

“What are you playing?” Citron asks, his breath tickling the shell of Itaru’s ear. It sends a pleasant shiver down Itaru’s spine. 

“KniRoun IV.”

“Oh... Did you have a bed day?” Citron asks.

Itaru hates that someone knows him well enough to understand that IV is his comfort game. Except he doesn’t actually _hate_ it. “Bad day,” he corrects Citron. “I _wish_ it was a bed day.”

“It’s a bed day _now_ ,” Citron insists. He’s snaking an arm around Itaru’s abdomen, cuddling even closer. The pressure of his arm squishes Itaru’s DS against his belly. _Nice_ , Itaru thinks dully, _maybe I’ll absorb it into me_. “You didn’t answer my question, you know! _Was_ it a bad day?”

The answer to that should be obvious, given Itaru’s near-catatonic state in bed and the fact that he’s playing IV, but Citron probably needs to hear him say it. 

“...yeah,” he mutters. 

“How so?” Citron asks, whispered into Itaru’s cheek like a secret. 

Summarizing it, recalling the details he’s already pushing far from his mind, feels exhausting, but he does his best, because Citron wants to know. “I got assigned a ton of stuff. Got home late.”

“I kissed you at dinner,” Citron says. 

“You missed me, you mean.”

Citron nods against the curve of Itaru’s jaw, his hair tickling Itaru’s skin. “I _wish_ I had kissed you at dinner, you know.”

Something like a laugh bubbles up in Itaru’s chest, but it’s too weak to break the surface. “You can kiss me any other time.”

“Now?”

Itaru reconsiders. There’s a pinch of anxiety in his chest at the thought, like if he opens himself up any more, he’ll disintegrate. “...maybe not now.”

“Okay~” Citron removes his face from Itaru’s neck and cranes his neck to see the DS screen. “Tell me what part you’re at?”

It’s hard to make the words go. Itaru picks up his DS and angles it towards Citron. “Party’s about to enter the woods. No Gawain yet. ‘S pretty early game.”

“You restarted?” Even at this angle, Itaru can see Citron’s eyes light up. “Is this another famous _taruchi_ restriction run?”

“Uh...” The only restriction right now is Itaru’s own brain. His memory for KniRoun never fails him, but his head feels foggy and dull, and each new screen and dialogue option feels like a tiny light he’s chasing after, tripping over his own feet in pursuit of the feeling of _something_. “Not really. Might add some later.”

“I see, I see~” 

Since Citron’s still looking at the DS screen, Itaru decides it’s not rude for him to keep playing. He picks the DS up and shifts so that he’s propped up sufficiently on his pillows, and starts to play again, his thumb holding the movement controls down as the Lancelot avatar onscreen dashes forward into the trees. Within seconds, a monster spawns, and Itaru curses under his breath. “Damnit, I didn’t level enough for this...”

“You can do it,” Citron cheers softly, waving his hand like a pom-pom. “You know this one’s attacks, right?”

“Well, yeah.” Itaru’s fingers are clumsy on the controls, though, and he doesn’t dodge the monster’s first attack fast enough. Lancelot’s HP takes a sizeable hit, and Itaru curses again. 

“Itaru,” Citron murmurs, his hand twitching toward Itaru’s arm. Itaru tenses, and Citron must take the hint, because he relaxes his hand, and speaks instead. “Do you have water spells yet?”

“Yeah, but I don’t have those leveled, either.” Itaru can feel himself growing upset, the tension in his chest building and building like a pot about to boil. He doesn’t want to snap at Citron, and he doesn’t want to burst into tears over losing a fight he knew he didn’t grind properly for. It’s a rookie mistake, though, and he’s _not_ a rookie. And he knows Citron isn’t doubting him, but somehow having someone else in his space right now isn’t helping him keep his cool. 

He’s also not paying attention to the screen. The timer for Lancelot’s turn slowly ticks down, and Gwen’s warning call barely finds Itaru’s ears. By the time he remembers the console in his fingers, it’s the monster’s turn again, and it fries Lancelot in one shot. 

“Damn it,” Itaru hisses, his fingers clenching around the frame of his DS, buzzing with the urge to slam it shut. Next to him, Citron makes a sympathetic noise. A familiar lump rises in Itaru’s throat, but he swallows hard, then again, hoping the sandpapery bad feeling will go away. He isn’t going to cry. Not in front of Citron; not at all. 

The screen fades to black. Itaru mashes his fingers into the buttons, willing himself to respawn faster. This space between lives always makes him antsy; without any stimulation, there’s nothing to contemplate but the blank screen, not even any solemn music, as frustrating as that would be. At least frustration would be a feeling he could focus on. When the game reloads at long last, Itaru’s already pressing down the buttons to run, and Lancelot bursts from his spot at the save point like a runner hearing the gunshot at the start of a race.

The bed dips as Citron readjusts, propping himself up at a better angle to see Itaru’s screen. With an audience, even one he knows he doesn’t have to impress, Itaru feels worse about his current bad performance in IV, but he also knows this game by heart. If he backtracks and grinds some more, he can roast all the monsters the forest will throw at him, easy. 

Easier if Citron isn’t paying attention to the game.

“Tell me about your day,” he says to Citron.

“My day?” Citron hums, tucking his chin onto Itaru’s shoulder as he watches Lancelot onscreen running back towards the town. “All I did was hang around the house...”

“Sounds like the ideal day, though,” Itaru offers. He’d better stop at the shops first, grab some more potions so he doesn’t have to run back and forth while grinding. 

“Ma~ybe...” Citron runs his finger along the side of Itaru’s DS. “Hey, don’t forget to unequip your chestplate. You’re passing the smithy.” 

“Shit.” Itaru stops running and tabs to his inventory. Rather than feeling stupid for forgetting something, it feels nice that Citron knows his comfort game nearly as well as he does. “Thanks. What did you do for breakfast?”

“I woke up after you left for work,” Citron says mournfully, “and I had toast... Leftover curry... Heated in the michaelwave...”

“Microwave,” Itaru says. 

“Yes!” Citron beams. “I got to talk to the university students before they left.”

“Did Banri go to class?”

“Um...” Citron taps his face against Itaru’s head, thinking. “I didn’t see him.”

“He probably got a lecture from Sakyo-san if that guy found out,” Itaru muses. Maybe Banri had a shitty day too, then. Itaru would text him if his arms weren’t currently immobilized by IV and Citron. “Okay, what did you do after breakfast.”

“I went shopping with the Director and Homare. To the grocery, and the pharmacy... One more place.” Citron continues tapping his face against Itaru’s head. Itaru wants to tell him to stop, or maybe kiss his chin, but as soon as he thinks of doing that, he can’t make himself move. He presses harder on the DS buttons, frustrated. “Oh! Art supplies. Homare bought a lot of notebooks!”

“That combo sounds pretty tiring.”

“Eh?” Citron laughs, nuzzling his face against Itaru’s temple. “Me? Tiring?”

“Ah, no... I meant Homare-san.” 

“You’re lying!”

“Yeah,” Itaru agrees easily. “As long as I have my phone, I could shop with you and Homare-san for hours.”

“Another lie,” Citron says, accusing, and Itaru laughs. Just a puff of breath, more air than sound, but it feels like ten times its worth of tension dissipates from his chest. 

“What about after you went shopping,” he prods. 

“I told you, I laid around the house,” Citron says. “I took a nice afternoon nap in the living room... And then I woke up when the students started coming home.”

“Did you help them with their homework?”

“I offered.” Citron scrunches his face. “Yuki said he doesn’t need my help... Tenma and Taichi said they didn’t have homework... Masumi also said he doesn’t need my help.”

“They’re all brats,” Itaru hums. In IV, he’s reached the paths on the other side of the town now, where he can grind against NPCs for a while. He’s put in maybe hundreds of hours painstakingly grinding out levels in this location before, on his various IV runthroughs, sometimes barely conscious in the middle of the night or after days of gaming with little sleep or food. By this point, he knows the required button presses, the calls of the NPCs, and the attack combos by heart. 

For a while he grinds in silence, and Citron watches, occasionally humming in interest when Itaru gets a critical hit or an NPC says something particularly fun. Itaru’s played this part so many times that it’s like walking home from the store, dragging yourself through familiar streets because you know you need to, but the lines that made him laugh or cringe when he first played this game—so long ago that it’s barely a copy of a memory now—still draw small smiles from him. Citron hasn’t played IV as many times as Itaru—this Itaru knows only because Citron told him, though, because Citron certainly knows the game well—but even if he had, he seems like the type to still laugh at funny lines like it’s his first time. And that’s not too different from Itaru; he still cries over the ending, even if it’s only a few tears, even if his body is so exhausted he passes out as soon as the credits start to roll.

He’s so lost in the rhythm of it, the warmth of Citron beside him and the familiar button presses, that he almost doesn’t register when he finally reaches his target level. Citron makes a tiny “oh!” sound and applauds one-handed against Itaru’s shoulder, and Itaru blinks at his DS screen.

“Oh, I did it.”

“You did it,” Citron says. “Yay!”

Itaru opens his inventory and checks how many potions he has left, decides he doesn’t need to run to the store, and starts heading back across town. Citron snuggles up to his side, growing quiet as he watches Lancelot run. In the quiet between them, punctuated only by quiet in-game sound effects, Itaru feels a second of dread in the pit of his stomach. What if he fails the same fight again? What if one of the rarer monsters spawns right away, and Citron watches him take a killer hit again?

He has to mentally shake himself then, and remember that he just put in probably twenty minutes of grinding, and he’s one level higher than the recommended level for the forest quests. His weapon and spells are stronger now, and if he doesn’t one-shot the lower level monsters, he’ll definitely get them in two moves, and they won’t do that much damage to him anyhow. It’s fine.

And even if it’s not, Citron isn’t the type to laugh at him for bombing an easy fight. Maybe that’s the more important part? It’s not like Itaru’s used to trusting people not to hurt him, or whatever.

Citron curls in closer to Itaru, stifling a yawn against Itaru’s shoulder. It is late, after all. On the DS screen, Lancelot runs through the entrance to the forest, and the screen goes blank. Itaru taps the buttons restlessly as he waits for the forest to load, and starts running immediately once it does. He gets ten blocks in when a monster spawns. 

It’s the same monster he fought earlier. Somehow it feels like fate is giving him a second chance. Or maybe laughing at him. There’s nothing to do but fight it in earnest, though. This time, Itaru doesn’t forget to watch the timer for his turn. He lashes out surely with a spell attack, and the monster’s health bar drops to 0 in just one hit.

It doesn’t feel like winning the lottery, or his birthday, or anything like that. It kind of feels like graduation day, when Itaru spent the ceremony meant to honor his and his classmates’ accomplishments desperate to take his fancy clothes off and crawl into bed. The empty feeling in his chest doesn’t fill or disappear. It’s just one fight. Just one win. 

But when he looks up and meets Citron’s eyes, the tight feeling in his chest isn’t there anymore. 

Citron’s cheering softly, making his fist into a little pom-pom again. “You did it!” he says.

“Yeah,” Itaru says. He lets the DS rest against his belly and stretches his arms out behind his head, giving his muscles a break from his cramped gaming posture. His stomach growls. “Is there dinner left?”

“Probably.”

“Curry?”

“Yes.”

“Ugh.” He is hungry, though, and he picks his DS up again to save the game, and then shuts it and slides it into the crevice between his mattress and the bedframe. Then he rolls over and plants a kiss on Citron’s cheek.

“Ah?” Citron smiles, his blue eyes practically shining. His hair has fallen into his face, and Itaru brushes it back, tucking it carefully behind one ear, and then lingers, brushing Citron’s cheek with his knuckles. Citron turns his head and kisses the side of Itaru’s hand before he can pull it away.

“You’re hungry, right?” Citron says, wriggling closer to Itaru. Itaru can feel the warmth Citron radiates, and he closes his eyes, tilting his head forward to kiss Citron on the lips.

“If it’s just curry, it can wait,” he murmurs. He feels Citron smile against his mouth, and presses forward to kiss him again.


End file.
